Swaying disbelievers one smear of ink at a time.

Tag Archives: canada

Women in North America have plenty to be concerned about. In Canada, where I reside and thank the stars every night for that good fortune, a motion to create a parliamentary committee is to be debated this fall. This committee would “reexamine” the “evidence” of when life begins. It would be a hand picked committee of elected members of parliament, not medical experts, trying to redefine when life begins. The members who brought it forward, and members who have openly support M312 have taken public anti-choice stances and have challenged Canada’s abortion legality.

Our sisters in the states are facing darker times then we, sadly. They have been under attack for decades. Not only is abortion illegal in many states, but in those states where it is legal it is increasingly difficult to access. Now, a Senator hopeful running in Missouri has outed the pro-life extremist faction of the GOP and has caused the GOP to demand he step away from the race – more to quiet the fact that he is not alone in his views. He said, with much certainty, that there is “legitimate rape” and other kinds of rape and women don’t often get pregnant from “legitimate rape” spawning numerous parodies of his insinuation that the uterus is magic and only accepts embryos made of love.

Unfortunately, he is not alone and there are many politicians and would be politicians who prey on fear, loneliness and extremism to parlay their misogynistic and hateful opinions. Just today the GOP platform committee approved an anti-choice party platform with rather strict and inflexible language regarding abortion. To parse apart what is rape and what isn’t quite frankly blames the victim.

In a powerful and vulnerable open letter to Akin, Eve Ensler describes her experience with rape and the effects it has. She puts into words what millions of women have experienced. Rape, violence, violation and then to be treated as a monster afterwards. Dissected and examined to ensure she is telling the truth.

The truth is that we still live in society that doesn’t value women equally. Many people do within this society. Most men, I would say, love and respect women. Most men wouldn’t think twice about believing if their daughter/mother/wife was raped. However, society still does not. Our elected members, most of whom are men, still believe they should make choices about women’s bodies, in the best interest of women – who clearly could not possibly have the wherewithal to make choices on their own behalf.

The underlying assumption of your statement is that women and their experiences are not to be trusted. That their understanding of rape must be qualified by some higher, wiser authority. It delegitimizes and undermines and belittles the horror, invasion, desecration they experienced. It makes them feel as alone and powerless as they did at the moment of rape.

– Eve Ensler

If I sound angry, it is because I am. I am very angry. I am angry that the fight my grandmother and mother faced is the same fight I am facing. I am angry that our legal system – in Canada and the US – still puts the blame on rape victims. Makes them prove that they were violated in the most horrific of fashion. That rape as a tactic of war is all too widespread.

This is not a singular event, this was a person who has said this same thing over and over again to receptive audiences. The mistake he made, and the mistake the GOP is punishing him for, is that he said it in a public space where his ignorance and misogyny was caught on tape during an election year. He outed a strong faction of the GOP that doesn’t believe women should have the rights over their own body, medically or otherwise.

In Canada, it is different. Thankfully. M312 was a nod, yes, but it was a quiet one. It was a wink in the direction of those the CPC is continuing to court. However, Harper can busy the PMO by convincing MPs to vote against, but it isn’t on moral high ground or a deep belief that women are perfectly capable of understanding their own bodies. It is because Harper fears what the GOP fears. An election fought on the issue of abortion rights. A fight he will lose. The GOP doesn’t want this to become about women’s rights. Their record hardly supports claims that they are progressive when it comes to women’s rights. The Harper record is not much better. At the end of the day low paying minimum wage job creation hurts women disproportionately. So does the nonsense women have to endure when political representation is discussed, or rather denied.

Sometimes anger is good. Sometimes it is needed. In solidarity with our sisters in the south and around the world, I cannot sit by while this debate rages on. When are we done discussing what is rape and what isn’t? When will be done denying necessary access to medical services to certain populations?

Join a women’s group. Support a feminist representative. Support these Senators in fighting back . Support MPs and political parties that have comprehensive medical platforms that support a women’s right to choose. Support Ensler when she says, “And by the way you’ve just given millions of women a very good reason to make sure you never get elected again, and an insanely good reason to rise.”

PURITY RING’S NEW ALBUM SHRINES IS AS TRUE AS THE BAND’S NAMESAKE

Shrines, Purity Ring‘s first LP, carves out a strong sound and presence – a genuine summer release. Originally from Edmonton, where Megan James and Corin Roddick first began to play together as two of the four-piece Gobble Gobble, they relocated to Montreal and formed Purity Ring in 2010. Label mates on 4AD with Blonde Redhead, Atlas Sound and St. Vincent, their release is in good company. Through their recent singles and splits, they have built up a following and this LP doesn’t fall short of expectations.

Shrines is shiny and bright electro pop – though it doesn’t fall entirely within that. With catchy synth hooks, hip-hop inspired beats and smooth breathy vocals, Shrines comes close to being just another catchy favourite, but there is something unique about James’ voice over slick arrangements where Roddick plays with everything he can. From the mellow and shimmery “Crawlersout”, to the darkly poppy “Obedear”, and the synth and auto-tune heavy “Amenamy”, the balance is maintained clear through the album. There are plenty of summer memories to create alongside this album and it fits handily in any number of backyard bonfires or warm nights.

Its fuzzy, somewhat smoggy sounds rings of the wave of garage rock coming out of small record labels now, especially those crafted throughout the Canadian landscape. Still, Shrines distinguishes Purity Ring into a new class, something a little different. Purity Ring could just as easily channeled lighter shimmery electro-pop but there is something darker. You can hear the heavier sounds from Gobble Gobble coming through, though if anything it gives it a stronger edge. Changing it from usual to something unexpected.

There is something though that detracts from this album. It is short and sweet, but it is clear that Purity Ring works best in small batches: stellar 7” and 7” splits. Fat Possum’s 7” split with Braids was a natural fit, for example. However, those sweet summertime moments eventually blend together and Shrines will likely not be immune from that. A solid album, hopefully one that shows even more potential growth for the next release from Purity Ring.

Like this:

A distributing article in the Globe and Mail today raised the issue of feticide in Canada and the highly controversial opinion that withholding the sex of a fetus past 30 weeks could curb the rates of abortion based on sex.

The editorial in the CMAJ notes a small U.S. study of 65 immigrant Indian women that found that 40 per cent had terminated pregnancies of female fetuses and that 90 per cent currently carrying a female fetus had pursued the idea of abortion.

But the proposed solution – limiting disclosure of fetal gender until 30 weeks – is already causing significant controversy and ethical concerns in the medical community, which asserts a woman’s right to have access to that information.

As a woman, I could not imagine terminating a pregnancy because of the sex of the fetus. However, I am incredibly fortunate to know that I have the right to terminate a pregnancy if necessary and because of that, a pregnancy brought to full term would be joyful and cherished – not to mention how welcome and wanted that child would be in my life. It would be brought into a world full of love, and as much safety and security as I could possibly assure.

Many women do not have such choice, for some not because they do not have legal access of abortion but because their family’s values will not allow that to happen. In the same token, many women would not bring a female fetus to full term because they understand all too well the violence and discrimination it would suffer merely for being born a girl.

I understand that doctor’s have limited ability to stem this in their professional life and exploring the notion of refusing to divulge the sex of the fetus until after 30 weeks is one direct way to slow female feticide. Perhaps bringing more women into the world slowly but surely will work to stop discrimination. Though, perhaps stopping a woman from getting an abortion will condemn that the child she bears to a life of suffering. Clearly, there is no simple solution and no action without a dear cost. The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists acknowledged this:

“The SOGC feels strongly that it is the cultural values and norms in specific segments of the Canadian population that must change to ensure that females are not confronted with procedures and intolerant environments before or after they are born.”

The greater issue here is not should we, as a society, demand the disclosure of the sex of a fetus or a child – though that debate is important and has many critical aspects. At stake is the way we as a society continue to allow persons and groups to devalue women and do nothing to stand against it. That we do not demand better from ourselves and our government. That we simply stop the process of raising children to believe it is only their gender that defines them and it is their gender that will define what they do with their lives. It is these persistent attitudes that allow women to be treated lesser than men, that allow and permit violence and discrimination against girls because they are not considered are worthwhile as boys.

There is something to be done aside from not disclosing the sex of a fetus. It is demanding that the sex of a fetus is inconsequential to the value of the fetus and the value of its person. That a female child is something to be celebrated, not dreaded. That all children deserve to be loved in equal measures because they are innocents in a world that judges them based on something they cannot control and cannot even articulate.

Like this:

Listening to Savage Love (Episode 256) about Planned Parenthood and I suddenly realized my favourite part of being in Seattle: being able to say I was Canadian.

While walking around the city, and while in line to get into Bumbershoot there was a few people from Planned Parenthood – as well as petitions for legalizing same-sex marriages, and some illicit substances (which, for the record, were being used rather liberally on the grounds), asking for support to send petitions to their congress person.

My partner and I always responded with an apology, that we were Canadian but with them 100% in principle. We even gave a couple of donations to Planned Parenthood representatives. We were always told how lucky we were – to live in a country that respected the right and the freedom to choose who you love, to choose what to do with your body, and that respected the opinions and advice of medical practitioners.

I truly hope we never lose those rights and freedoms.

And until our southern neighbors get them as well, I suggest making a donation to Planned Parenthood USA and even your local chapter right here at home in Canada. Everyone deserves access to reproductive health resources – it shouldn’t matter where you live.

The omnibused “tough on crime” bills also includes Bill C 15 – “An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts”.

Funny how Canada is passing legislation into effect that was proven detrimental to the cause of lessening crimes and only served to lock up one time offenders or youth who then became institutionalized in the worst ways possible. I heard a quote a while ago and I wish I could attribute it but essentially it went, the best way to turn a young person into an urban gang member is to incarcerate them. Let’s be honest, being tough on drugs and minimum sentencing often means incarcerating young people for single transgressions.

Reminds me of this poignant, and stomach turning, This American Life episode: “Very Tough Love”.

This week: A drug court program that we believe is run differently from every other drug court in the country, doing some things that are contrary to the very philosophy of drug court. The result? People with offenses that would get minimal or no sentences elsewhere sometimes end up in the system five to ten years.

WikiLeaks cables released over the past few weeks show the Alberta government promised senior U.S. government officials as far back as 2003 that there would be abundant electricity exports available from Alberta, but that limited power line transmission was the major impediment to the juice flowing south.

A 2003 cable from Paul Cellucci, U.S. ambassador to Canada at the time, says then-Alberta energy minister Murray Smith -who went on to serve as Alberta’s representative in Washington -promised the U.S. government that additional electricity generation from oilsands projects would provide abundant supply to ship stateside in future years.

The electricity exports were dependent, however, on new power line transmission capacity coming online, the cables note.

“Smith and others also want to make sure that the (United States government) is aware that over time there will be tremendous electricity cogeneration available as a result of the huge thermal needs of the oilsands refining process,” says the 2003 cable.

“This could over time make significant new electricity exports available to the United States, but at least for now there is limited capacity to move this west and then south through British Columbia and on to our Pacific Northwest.”

This, along with the announcement made in 2003 by Smith that all development of the power grid would be payed for by the owner of the grid: Alberta, has some people in the province upset. Which is curious to me.

Ron Leipert, Alberta’s Energy Minister, has continued to say to this day that, “anybody who thinks we’re going to be exporting power is living in a different world. I don’t know where this bogeyman stuff is coming from.” Yet, Alberta does export a great deal of energy. Billions of gallons of oil goes south every week. If you read carefully above, you would also see that the power grid built to supply the U.S. with energy is to be used to refine the very oil Alberta’s oil sands produces to sell to America.

America’s big to-do about decreasing reliance on foreign oil doesn’t really apply to Alberta, or anywhere else in Canada for that matter. NAFTA made sure of that.

A great read on NAFTA’s energy policy is Chapter 7 in Hufbauer and Schott’s NAFTA revisited: achievements and challenges. The book itself provides a fairly good breakdown of NAFTA and what the impacts are and the chapter on energy is fairly detailed in both history and current impacts.

A shorter and more digestible analysis is available through Gordon Laxer of the Parkland Institute. His article, “Canada’s energy needs come first”, gives a great overview of some of the most pressing issue facing Canadian/Albertan energy security, but for me the key piece is this:

Western Canada can’t supply all of Eastern Canadian needs, because NAFTA reserves Canadian oil for Americans’ security of supply. Canada now exports 63 per cent of our oil and 56 per cent of our natural gas production. Those export shares are currently locked in place by NAFTA’s proportionality clause which requires us not to reduce recent export proportions. Mexico refused proportionality. It applies only to Canada.

The end of all of this back story is that we should hardly be surprised that in 2003 the Alberta government engaged in quiet talks to secure a stronger and more reliable source of energy (fracking to get “clean coal”) to the states for a very very low price.

I am glad to see this information coming out and I hope that more Canadians and Albertans take greater notice of where the resources they pay a dear price to exploit are going and who they are serving. It is a key issue, and increasingly will change lifestyles worldwide. Already, consumers see gasoline become increasingly more expensive. Soon, the questions of why gasoline in Canada is so expensive when the government has consistently told us we are sitting on vast quantities of it will yield answers – answers that will unfortunately not be able to reverse the decisions already made.

We cannot undo NAFTA’s proportionality clause – regardless of prices here at home or even shortages – we must continue to provide the U.S. with the same quantity as we have in peak times. I think the past just caught up to us.

Like this:

Building hopping. Raymond’s favourite past time. To move from one very old building, to a slightly less old, but still old building – very old being measured in relative terms as Southern Alberta is hardly known for its historical architecture and preservation techniques.

“This building was the first bank, a Bank of Montreal, and was erected when Raymond boomed in population, down the street stood a roller rink.”

I’m not sure why the last part of that sentence is relevant to the casual observer but it is there, commemorating Raymond’s roller rink on the plaque affixed to what is now Raymond’s only apartment building.

The town is small, the streets are wide and the closest thing to vegetarian is the mushroom Egg Fu Yung at Diamond Luks. Still, I feel strangely comfortable. I am aesthetically out-of-place here yet it feels hardly notices, or novelly accepted. Maybe it is because no one walks the streets of Raymond.

They are always quiet, save a few cars and trucks spouting diesel fumes. Across the street from the apartment building is the town hall/library/theatre and the only time I see the people of Raymond is when they’re streaming in or pouring out.

I wonder who they are, what they do, and how they live? What are the people like who live in this quiet, almost picturesque town?

The closest I have been to the elusive Raymond-ite was in September. The Raymond Comets were playing the Lethbridge Rams at the new University of Lethbridge stadium. The season opener for the two school’s football teams, and I have never seen anything like it.

Two thousand people were there, screaming and cheering as teenagers ran around smashing each other to the ground. I’m simplifying the game I admit, but what stood out to me was the sheer volume of energy. The intensity of parents hopes and dreams riding on the shoulders of their son, of girls strutting past wearing the jackets of the player they are going with, and the enthusiasm exhibited by the mega fans, the football player wannabes.

It was too much for me to handle that night. The sheer out pouring of emotion brought on by catharsis on the football field.

Those teams played for a crowd of the like I had seen rarely.

So here I am, at a loss of what Raymond is. Hundreds of people drove to Lethbridge to see young people live out the roles chosen for them as a very early age. Fans wore body paint, and the symbology of culture was prominent through visual displays.

Yet, there is no reconciling the Raymond of that night with the Raymond I walk in now. The streets are quiet and the storefronts are unobtrusive. The sight of a car full of teen’s coming back from Rugby practice is rare, and understated.

The movie store is quiet, and closes at 9pm. This town is sleepy, slow-moving, exhibiting none of the energy I saw before. There are cars lining main street, but I see no one in or around them. A surveillance society, and I don’t know who is watching.

Many store fronts and front lawns carry both American and Canadian flags. A divided identity between two nations superficially similar.

Like this:

The proroguing of Canadian Parliament has taken worldwide news agencies by storm. From Great Britain-based The Economist, to online news sources such as Reuters, to home grown national news sites such as MacLean’s, The Globe and Mail, Rabble, The National Post, and the CBC what this break in parliament means to Canadians has been covered extensively.

Prorogation is not as uncommon as most think, and has been done by nearly every elected government in Canadian history. However, this time Canadians have reacted with an unprecedented level of distaste. Proroguing parliament at a time when the current government is under scrutiny for alleged torture in Afghanistan, when Canada is still trying to stay afloat in the worldwide recession, and after a period of international embarrassment because of Canada’s lack of action on climate change seems to have made Canadians rather unhappy.

This discontent has manifested itself in public displays of frustration with the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), although such public displays have so far accomplished very little in the way of changing the current political situation. The great public equalizer, Facebook, has become a topic of heated debate amongst pundits who now have very little to do without Question Period to keep them hot and bothered. Speculation on the effect of blogging, Twitter, and the exponentially growing Facebook group, “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament,” will have on the political process has been flying left and right. Defenders of the beloved social media sites denounce naysayers, citing the exponential growth, the increased volume of communication between members, and the spread of knowledge amongst Canadian citizens about what proroguing means.

There is some truth to what these social media advocates preach about. The Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group has 158,164 members at the time of writing, a number that, when compared to other leading Canadian political groups on the same site, doesn’t even compare. The BC Anti HST group has 129,790, while the Canadians Against Coalition Government – a site that was used last year to hold rallies across Canada against the Liberal-NDP coalition – had 126, 930 at the height of its popularity. For the further sake of comparison, members of ten separate groups celebrating the television program Mad Men only total to 8,116 individual Facebook members. But what, if anything, does all this mean?

Critics scoff at the impact that these groups have. It is all too easy to join a group on a social networking site logged into an average of 100,000,000 times daily; it does little to motivate a person to attend a rally or write a letter to their MP, and it is a very passive form of resistance. However, the ripple effect of online tools is impossible to know comprehensively, for better or worse.

The group itself has “gone real world,” as described by CBC political blogger, Kady O’Malley. The use of social media by Canadians to discuss prorogation has spawned an entire debate unto itself, sliding itself over top the actual prorogation debate. Articles in independent media sources such as this paper, blogs, and the mainstream media have all picked up on the mass conversion to political interest. While this group may not change which MP’s will be on Parliament Hill come January 25th, it certainly has changed how Canada is debating the decision to prorogue. The question is no longer whether or not Harper has the legitimacy to do so – and constitutionally he does – it is now whether or not Canadians will retaliate against him and the Conservative Party when session is re-convened.

An EKOS poll taken on January 7th, a little over two weeks after Harper made that fateful call to Michaelle Jean shows the Conservative Party drop by 2.8%, giving them a 5.8 point lead over the Liberal Party, their closest opposition. This drop indicates that the gap between the two parties has narrowed considerably since mid December.

Despite these polling statistics, this could very well mean nothing. Facebook, while socially relevant and broad in its scope, is still self-selecting and the 158 154 members of the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament group may well be the same users who would not vote for the CPC in the first place. When session reconvenes in March, it will be most interesting to see how many of those members watch the Throne Speech, and involve themselves in continued political action. The creator of the group himself, Christopher White, is a University of Alberta Masters student with only a peripheral interest in politics. The site is entirely made of content that members posted and created, not of content he himself created.

Regardless of how much genuine direct action comes out of the Facebook group, or from any of the blogging chatter or Twittery tweets, the fact remains that it is getting us talking. Worldwide, Canada’s parliamentary break in proceedings is getting as much air and print time as South Korea’s fist fighting parliamentary proceedings. With the government proroguing parliament for the second time in a year, Canadians are getting used to hearing it, and are likely starting to understand what it means. Is it very possible that Facebook is actually useful for something other than tragically erroneous grammatical errors and pretending to be a farmer.

Parliament convened on the 18th of November in 2008, and was quickly prorogued on December fourth, leaving an extra long Christmas break for all members of Parliament. As it was such a short little session for our elected members, only four government bills and 52 private member bills were tabled. The four government bills passed through a first reading, but were killed, only to come back during the second session in January. The 52 private member bills were kept as they were, frozen in time until parliament could reconvene.

This is due to nifty (and somewhat convenient) law that was passed over a decade ago that allowed private member bills to carry forward from one session to the next within the same parliament – even despite proroguing. If – and now I think it is safe to say – when a parliament is prorogued due to the wisdom of the Governor General, all government bills that are killed on the spot rise again, reborn. Private member bills, however, stay kicking around in the state they were left in, to be reintroduced to the House or Senate for eventual defeat or royal assent. After the 2009 prorogation, all 52 private member bills came back, all having undergone first reading in the first session.

On to session number two. It was a busy year for the Senators and MP’s, beginning on that shiny morning of January 26th, 2009. 354 private member bills were tabled, all made it through the first reading and many were ready to come back after they were scoured by committees and layered with amendments. Only 64 government bills were tabled, though. Out of those 64, 30 received royal assent, which means more than half died on the table.

Truly, though, what does this matter to Canadians? It is not the number of bills passed or defeated; it is their content that matters. Many of them were procedural, but a few notable ones include Bill C-6: The Consumer Safety Bill, Bill C-15: The Drug Sentencing Bill; and Bill C-26: The Auto Theft Bill. All three made it to Senate and will now have to be brought back into the House then to the Senate, which will likely look remarkably different after Harper’s expected appointments.

Parliament amended the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act that extended the geographic definition of Canadian arctic waters to 200 nautical miles offshore (from 100), a response to the perceived threat on Canada’s arctic sovereignty.

An “act respecting not-for-profit corporations and certain other corporations,” as stated on the LEGISinfo site, was introduced and received royal assent. This act combined three previous bills that died during the 2008 prorogation. This act was introduced to give non-profit organization greater flexibility and recognizes them separately outside the Canada Corporations Act.

There is also Bill C-8, Family Homes in Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act. Reserve land is governed under federal law, and all acquisition or transfer of property is as well. However, the provincial government decides when a married couple divorces what the division of property will be, both real and personal. See the catch? The province cannot make decisions about reserve land, but there is no federal legislation or provisions in the Indian Act that governs the division of martial property. Essentially, those who obtain a divorce who also reside on reserves in Canada, are stuck in limbo as to the ownership of their home, their land, and any other property attained in their marriage. Even the United Nations has told Canada to get their act together. However, since this bill died on the order paper it looks like, once again, Ottawa will have to re-examine its treatment of FNMI persons in Canada.

These are only three examples of government bills that came through during the second session of parliament. It may have been short, but it sure was not sweet. Despite the potential to achieve quite a bit, many bills will have to come forward again, going through parliamentary procedure. Hopefully we will see more decisions made before the next election, or dare I say, prorogation.